Negative Railroad A Collection of Breaks in the Line

The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain.

Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat, a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen.

None of the challenges to Barry’s qualifications to be President have made it past the first hearing by the Supreme Court. A California suit aimed at preventing the certification of that State’s 55 electoral votes is proceeding, but seems somewhat moot now.

But until Barry can definitively prove which doctor in which Hawai’ian hospital delivered him, the opposition will not rest:

The math professor who solved the mystery of A Hard Day’s Night is featured in another video story. This time, Jason Brown has used mathematical analysis to write his own Beatles tune:

Politicians and their hired-gun economists are aiming their stimulus proposal at the wrong target. With sights zeroed by lazy Keynsian theory, they desire to stimulate consumption (aggregate demand). But consumption doesn’t make us richer.

Steve Sailer sees the true target and punches out the 10 ring:

There’s an interesting exchange posted over at The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid. It’s an investigation of the economic fallacies in the “Porkulus” proposal now snorting its way through the Senate.

President Obama is reportedly outraged to learn that financial executives were actually paid the bonuses owed them in 2008:

President Obama fired a warning shot at Wall Street on Thursday, branding bankers “shameful” for giving themselves $18.4 billion in bonuses as the economy was spinning out of control and the government was spending billions to bail out many of the nation’s most prominent financial firms.

Creating jobs by breaking windows is not only bad economics, it’s criminal (except when government does it):

The owner of a glass company accused of a $132,000 scheme to smash Scottsdale school bus windows and profit from the repairs has been indicted.

We are not grabbing power here in Washington, we are just relieving [the States] of the burden of governing themselves.

Quoted from: Coyote

A favorite memory of my time walking the 55418 with the Northeast Citizen Patrol is a conversation with a couple of cops. The officers were telling us true stories of dumb criminals. After several laughable tales, one of the cops joked, “We don’t catch ‘em because we’re smart.”

Well, TJIC pointed to the sad truth of that wisecrack:

(click picture to visit a Detroit photographer’s gallery of 100 Abandoned Houses)

Via: Maggie’s Farm

A standard tactic in politics is to dehumanize the opposition. Those who disagree are painted as extreme abstractions, and it becomes easy to forget that enemies remain persons. Contentious topics, with their increasingly strident debate, frequently devolve into the harshest depersonalizations.

Abortion is such a topic. The rhetoric is pure polarized abstraction. But as Vanderleun shows, abortion is intensely—and essentially—personal:

The downtown Minneapolis Hennepin County library is attacking patrons again:

The Minneapolis Central Library has closed most of its Nicollet Mall entrance because of icicles forming and falling from the building’s distinctive “wing.”

Many people think the design of the building and wing is to blame, and someone should have foreseen this problem.

I finally found the time to read No Enemy, But Peace:

…the true story of Sergeant Marco Martinez, a former gang-banger who found his true calling as a rifleman in the Marines. When his best friend and squad leader is injured during his first firefight, Sgt. Martinez rallies his embattled squad while single-handedly taking down a bunker full of jihadists. Written by Sgt. Richard C. Meyer, who served in the same unit as Sgt. Martinez and was present during the battle, this is the first comic produced by Iraq War veterans about the war itself.

Those of us still paying attention noted last November that the war in Iraq is over. (And the good guys won!) As the current President harrumphs and blusters about withdrawal timetables, we noted that on January 1st, 2009, the “Green Zone” in Baghdad, all Iraqi airspace, and well, all of Iraq reverted to Iraqi control.

The ripples radiating from Barry’s inaugural address have revealed something about another famous address. FDR’s first inaugural offered the powerful rhetoric, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” A fan of speeches but no fan of Roosevelt, I’ve never paid attention to what the rich old cripple actually said:

Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

Quoted from: Saul Alinsky

I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.

Into the cacophany of opinion regarding Mr. Obama’s inaugural address, I launch this:

(the first 2:45 is Parliamentary business and may be skipped past)

Roughly equivalent to an inaugural address, this was Winston Churchill’s first speech as Prime Minister, to the House of Commons on May 13th, 1940. The Nazis had taken the low countries and were smashing through France. The Battle of Britain had not yet begun. These were the darkest hours of modern history.

A model for leaders during crisis, drafted by the penultimate master of the English language, this is the inaugural to beat:

I do not begrudge anyone a celebration. Frequently I lament the absence of joy in a world preoccupied with the notion that someone somewhere might be hurt by a flash of exuberance.

The trick is to choose carefully what one celebrates. Victories deserve parties. Conducting business does not. An inauguration is just business. Victory came on election night. Yesterday seems comparable to a newly-hired cubicle worker inviting all his pals over to watch him fill out his W-4.

It is true that there could have been no Obama presidency had Dr King and the movement he sprang from not existed, but that simple fact of history does not amount to a King benediction from the grave for Obama's moral character and political policies.

Indeed, Dr King's life and words are indelible evidence that he and Obama represent opposing moral and political camps.